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Developer preview for JDK 8 pushed back

Originally, Oracle planned to release a feature-complete version of the next Java Development Kit for the sixth JDK 8 milestone on 31 January. Instead, 16 JEPs (Java Enhancement Proposals) were pushed back to the seventh milestone, which was supposed to be completed and made available to the general Java community for broad testing today. But now it looks as though the final build for this milestone will be released at a later date.

The delay seems to be mostly due to JEPs developed for Project Lambda, which aims to add closures to Java. Some aspects, like language and VM integration, have already been completed, according to Mark Reinhold, the engineer in charge of Java development at Oracle, but at least another six weeks will be needed to coordinate the work done so far and add the features that are still missing. Other JEPs aren't as important for this release and could be dropped if necessary, he writes, but Project Lambda is deemed essential.

Reinhold now plans to determine how much of a delay is necessary to complete the milestone and update the schedule in the next month. It remains to be seen what this means for the final release of JDK 8, which at the moment is still planned for 9 September.